


starlight

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Anal Sex, Derek Hale-centric, Falling In Love, Fluff and Smut, Future Fic, Getting Together, Insecure Derek Hale, M/M, POV Derek, Somnophilia, Versatile Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 19:27:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15713577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: He’s broken and he knows he’s broken.Broken people don’t get things like this.Broken people don’t get happiness.But there is this, too--There is Stiles, with his gentle shining smile, and his quiet, knowing eyes, and his refusal to go anywhere but Derek’s side.





	starlight

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a beautiful prompt on Twitter the other day and chased down the whole quote by Richard Siken, and this is what happened. In other news--this is my 200th work on AO3. Enjoy, friends! 
> 
> Original prompt:  
> You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling

_ You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling. _

~*~

Derek loves the way the stars look like diamonds. 

He knows--he’s a werewolf, and werewolves love the moon, but he’s always felt drawn to the stars, these beautiful bright, impossibly small pinpricks of beauty. 

They’re gorgeous and overshadowed by the moon and he loves them, loves them, remembers nights in the meadow, sprawled on a bed of dew damp grass, Laura’s hair messy in his eyes and his fingers tracing pictures in the black night sky, connecting the endless maze of stars into things that only he could see. 

Mama would watch, and Laura would giggle, press against his side and fall asleep there, while he stayed awake and stared at the stars. 

He never quit loving them, never quit finding them heartbreakingly beautiful. 

But he quit watching them. 

~*~ 

Stiles is like starlight--bright and beautiful and cold, impossibly distant and vibrantly alive, and overshadowed. 

Derek doesn’t understand  _ how _ he’s overshadowed by Scott and Lydia, by snarling Isaac and sweet Kira and Allison’s steel. 

He is happy in the background, doing research, taking care of the pack, the one who guides but never leads, never demands the spotlight that Erica craves or the attention that Jackson needs. 

He is quiet steady constant to the others’ constant fluctuations, constant drama and petty disagreements and blazing affections. 

Stiles is none of those things, and all of those things, and Derek wonders how anyone can see them--the pack, his pack, these wolves he calls his own, when they stand next to the luminescent beauty of Stiles. 

~*~ 

He’s broken and he knows he’s broken. 

Broken people don’t get things like this. 

Broken people don’t get happiness. 

But there is this, too--

There is  _ Stiles, _ with his gentle shining smile, and his quiet, knowing eyes, and his refusal to go anywhere but Derek’s side. 

~*~ 

Stiles leaves pieces of himself, in Derek’s life.

He thinks sometimes, that he should take them back. The hoodie and the dirty shoes, the books and a picture that fell out of his wallet, hats and once, his keys. 

Other things too, things Derek feels guilty for looking at. 

Letters and scraps of poetry, spell he’s researching and lists for dinner, and half scrawled dreams and stories, all so rich and intricately woven that Derek is always left aching with want for more. 

They’re tiny glimpses of Stiles, into the always moving mind of his starlit boy and he doesn’t deserve that because it wasn’t a gift freely given, it was glimpses, half seen, always stolen. 

~*~ 

He sits with Stiles sometimes, and Stiles will say something--small and innocuous and Derek hears, everything he isn’t saying. 

He hears, what is layered under those small statements, about his mother his father his childhood his fears. 

Derek hears, and he shivers, because those moments warm and burn and cut and he wouldn’t trade them, not for anything. 

~*~ 

They talk, Derek thinks, all the time. 

Stiles talks  _ all the time.  _

But the things that matter--the things that he means. 

Stiles stores those up, traps them behind his teeth, and even when he can’t stop talking, even when his words turn sly and sticky and sweet, he keeps that piece of himself guarded. 

Derek hates it, and understands it. 

Some words are fragile, are precious and easily destroyed. 

And Derek is a broken boy, all sharp edges and jagged, unfit pieces of a puzzle whose pictures been burnt away. 

He doesn’t trust himself with things precious and easily destroyed, why the hell would Stiles? 

~*~ 

Stiles likes to sleep near him, and it makes something in his chest go tight and soft, all at once. 

When he’s sleeping, he’s like a banked fire, cool and almost touchable, pale and ethereal and so pretty it makes his mouth go dry. 

He’s defenseless like this, and utterly fearless, and Derek doesn’t know if it’s because of him or in spite of him. 

~*~ 

The first time Stiles crawls into Derek’s bed, he’s not sure what’s happening. 

There’s a moment, when Stiles hesitates, pale liquid light above him and a bruise from Derek’s mouth on his throat. 

“Do you want this?” he asked, and it made something in him ache, the serious, almost grave light in Stiles eyes. 

Derek had rolled him in the dark sheets, pressed him into the bed that smelt of him, and  _ them _ and kissed him silent. 

“Yes,” he whispered. 

He had pressed the word to Stiles throat, rolled it in his mouth with a pale pink nipple while Stiles shuddered, licked it down his lean torso. Bitten it into the jut of his hips and whispered it like a plea into the crease of his groin. He said it again, like a prayer and a hymn all in one, a moment before he took Stiles in his mouth and hummed it around the length of him while Stiles cursed and twisted and rocked up, into his mouth, his hands gripping and pulling, demanding and Derek thought,  _ yes. _

He wants everything with Stiles. 

~*~ 

Stiles has shades of silence, Derek has learned. The pack thinks he’s all brash noise and endless chatter, but Derek has spent a long time, watching Stiles. He knows the words, the constant stream of noise is a defense mechanism. 

Stiles told him, once, in a quiet hush, that when his mother died, the Sheriff was always quiet. 

When Stiles was quiet, he could sometimes hear his mother’s laughter and singing. 

But when he was quiet, the Sheriff drank, and forgot there was a little boy with a dead mother, and Stiles learned to never be quiet. 

Derek listens to his quiet confession and he treasures the silences Stiles trusts him with. 

Stiles says a lot, with his words and with his quiet, and Derek hears the words he never says, echoing in the quiet of the loft when the boy is silent, his head in Derek’s lap. 

~*~ 

Stiles never says how he feels. 

He watches Derek, sometimes, and the words fill up the space between them, the feeling shining in his beautiful eyes, but he never  _ says _ them and it means Derek can stay. 

Because when he thinks about it--when he thinks about Stiles loving him--he feels like the worst kind of perfect. 

He feels like he’s flying, tripping on wolfsbane like the night in New York when Laura told him they were safe and they smoked on the roof of the apartment complex and Derek stared at the light washed sky and tried to see the stars. 

And, too, the crushing kind of lost he felt, kneeling next to her dead body, the numb kind of disbelieving that filled him when he buried Erica. 

Stiles loves him, and he never says it, and Derek thinks it’s everything he’s ever wanted and the very last thing he deserves. 

He pulls Stiles close, kisses him softly, and hates himself for refusing to let him go. 

~*~ 

He laughs. In a world that is death and dying, fighting for their lives and constant danger, Stiles laughs, and Derek thinks anyone would be captivated by him. 

People like Stiles aren’t real. 

Sometimes, when he’s watching Stiles arguing with Scott, snapping at Peter, worrying over his father, he thinks it’s true. 

He thinks Stiles isn’t real because if he was, he would never turn that starbright smile on Derek. 

~*~

The night before he leaves for college, he spends in Derek’s bed. 

Derek, who knows that Scott would miss him, who knows that the Sheriff is struggling with his son’s impending departure, who knows Lydia demanded Stiles’ presence the night before he left--Derek can’t understand it. 

Stiles smiles at him, small and easy, “This is where I want to be.” 

He followed that illogical statement up with a kiss and crawled into Derek’s bed. 

When Derek follows--of course he follows, he always follows Stiles--he clings to the boy with a strength that borders desperation. 

When Stiles presses into him, his eyes closed as he fucks Derek with slow rolls of his hips, all smooth muscle and graceful movement and exquisite pleasure, Derek keeps his eyes open. 

He takes and takes and takes, everything Stiles will give him, and he watches the entire time, tucks it all away--every sigh and breathless gasp, every moan and gritted out curse and the way he whispers  _ Derek _ when he comes, memorizes the way his mouth falls open, and the way he melts into Derek’s rough thrusts after he comes, the way he rolls back into them with a pleased little noise that pushes Derek over the edge, and the way his scent goes smug over the scent of sex and sweat, pleased as hell that he can make Derek lose control. 

He memorizes it all, and hopes that he’ll get this again. 

~*~

Derek thinks about leaving sometimes. 

He thinks it would be better, for all of them. 

There is a tiny selfish part of him that thinks he would be healthier away from this damn town so intent on killing him. 

He thinks about it. 

But there is, always, Stiles, with his wide smile and knowing eyes and the words that shine like a promise between them and the fact that Derek would happily die in this fucking town, if it kept Stiles from being sad. 

He thinks about leaving, sometimes. But he never actually does. 

~*~ 

They drive sometimes. 

Stiles likes to drive and Derek--Derek thinks sitting next to Stiles with the highway falling away beneath the wheels of the jeep, the sky open and shining stars down on them, is the closest thing he will ever get to running with Stiles, and he loves it. 

Stiles comes to him, anxiety almost sparking off his skin, his mouth set in a line that hurts Derek to see, and shakes his keys and Derek rises, follows him into the night. 

They don’t talk, on nights like that. 

It’s when Stiles is most silent. Derek, when he lets himself think about keeping this, about keeping Stiles, thinks about those nights. 

He wants a lifetime of them. 

He wants his head in Stiles’ lap as they watch the stars in his meadow. 

~*~ 

Starlight, he learned when he was a child and the world was still innocent and simple and safe--starlight is a lie. 

Starlight is the echo racing through endless voids, the bright gleam of something that’s long dead. 

Starlight is a beautiful and false, cold and temporary, an exquisite lie, and Derek loves it. 

He’s always thought Stiles was like starlight--bright and beautiful and shining, impossible to look away from, cold and cutting and burning bright. 

Stiles though--Stiles is the truest thing Derek has ever believed in, and that terrifies him. 

~*~

Stiles is  _ home _ . 

He’s safety and sharp words and laughter and bad movies. He’s quiet company and loud arguments and the brightest star in the sky, the light Derek uses to guide his life, the way he always knows where  _ home _ is and he is terrified because he is a broken boy grown into a shattered man, and Stiles…

Stiles deserves more, deserves perfection and soft touches and endless happiness. 

~*~ 

It takes years, long years, for Derek to realize that Stiles is shattered starlight, cold light glittering on glass, just as broken as he is. 

~*~ 

Stiles is sleepy and soft in the mornings, and Derek thinks, this is his favorite Stiles.

Silent and soft, and curling into him, coming awake with a delicate flush in pale cheeks and his lip caught in his teeth as Derek rolls his hips and fills him up. 

He’s slippery and open still from the night before, and his eyes flutter as he clings to Derek, and murmurs sleepy nonsense against his chest and let’s Derek fuck him until his murmurs turn to moans. 

Sometimes Derek thinks this--this will be the moment. 

Stiles has been in his life, in his bed, in his heart, for years and the words are there, in the silence, but never spoken and it’s an ache in his chest when the moment slips away, chased by Stiles’ inarticulate cry as he comes. 

~*~ 

“Come with me,” he says. 

“Run away with me,” he murmurs. 

“Let’s pretend for a few hours,” he begs. 

And Derek goes.

He sits in the passenger seat and Stiles is at his side, all these years later, as he watches the sky and the silence is easy and Stiles is his, natural and perfect and it burns in him. 

He trembles as he stares, at this beautiful boy who has filled his life with love and laughter and  _ light. _

Stiles, with one hand on his knee, and the other on the wheel, and Derek’s whole heart cradled in his delicate fingers. 

He feels it, pressing against him, a secret that has never been a secret, and he wants to be brave enough to say it. 

Here, washed by starlight and the moon, pale and waxing and lovely, he wants to whisper them, a secret only for Stiles. 

“I love you,” he breathes. 

~*~ 

He always thought loving Stiles would hurt. 

He always thought, if he kept it to himself, he could protect them. 

Protect Stiles and protect himself. 

But it cuts, the words that he wants to say, the words he can’t quite bring himself to say, the words he aches to hear--it cuts and it  _ hurts _ and he breathes them out like a confession on a starlit road and something hot and intoxicating bloomed in his chest, a warmth so sudden it was almost an ache. He smiles. 

~*~ 

_ “I love you,”  _ he says again, and Stiles squeezes his knee. 

“I love you too,” he murmurs and he smiles. 

It shines like starlight. 

_ ~*~  _

_ ''“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.” _

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [Tumblr](https://areiton.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Full credit to Richard Siken for the beginning and closing quote.


End file.
